Black Coffee - Agatha Christie [46]
Carelli put his hat and suitcase on a chair. ‘I feel I can no longer trespass on your hospitality,’ he announced.
Obviously delighted, Miss Amory was polite enough to murmur, ‘Well, of course, if you feel like that –’ Then, remembering the situation in which the occupants of the house currently found themselves, she added, ‘But I thought there were some tiresome formalities –’ Her voice trailed off indecisively.
‘Oh, that is all arranged,’ Carelli assured her.
‘Well, if you feel you must go –’
‘I do, indeed.’
‘Then I will order the car,’ Miss Amory declared briskly, moving to the bell above the fireplace.
‘No, no,’ Carelli insisted. ‘That, too, is all arranged.’
‘But you’ve even had to carry your suitcase down yourself. Really, the servants! They’re all demoralized, completely demoralized!’ She returned to the settee, and took her knitting from her bag. ‘They can’t concentrate, Dr Carelli. They cannot keep their heads. So curious, is it not?’
Looking distinctly on edge, Carelli replied offhandedly, ‘Very curious.’ He glanced at the telephone.
Miss Amory began to knit, keeping up a flow of aimless conversation as she did so. ‘I suppose you are catching the twelve-fifteen. You mustn’t run it too fine. Not that I want to fuss, of course. I always say that fussing over –’
‘Yes, indeed,’ Dr Carelli interrupted peremptorily, ‘but there is plenty of time, I think. I – I wondered if I might use the telephone?’
Miss Amory looked up momentarily. ‘Oh, yes, of course,’ she said, as she continued to knit. It seemed not to have occurred to her that Dr Carelli might have wanted to make his telephone call in private.
‘Thank you,’ murmured Carelli, moving to the desk and making a pretence of looking up a number in the telephone directory. He glanced across impatiently at Miss Amory. ‘I think your niece was looking for you,’ he remarked.
Miss Amory’s only reaction to this information was to talk about her niece while continuing with her knitting undisturbed. ‘Dear Barbara!’ she exclaimed. ‘Such a sweet creature. You know, she leads rather a sad life here, far too dull for a young girl. Well, well, things will be different now, I dare say.’ She dwelt pleasurably on this thought for a moment, before continuing, ‘Not that I haven’t done all I could. But what a girl needs is a little gaiety. All the Beeswax in the world won’t make up for that.’
Dr Carelli’s face was a study in incomprehension, mixed with more than a little irritation. ‘Beeswax?’ he felt obliged to ask.
‘Yes, Beeswax – or is it Bemax? Vitamins, you know, or at least that’s what it says on the tin. A and B and C and D. All of them, except the one that keeps you from having beri-beri. And I really think there’s no need for that, if one is living in England. It’s not a disease one encounters here. It comes, I believe, from polishing the rice in native countries. So interesting. I made Mr Raynor take it – Beeswax, I mean – after breakfast every day. He was looking pale, poor young fellow. I tried to make Lucia take it too, but she wouldn’t.’ Miss Amory shook her head disapprovingly. ‘And to think, when I was a girl, I was strictly forbidden to eat caramels because of the Beeswax – I mean Bemax. Times change, you know. Times do change.’
Though he attempted to disguise the fact, by now Dr Carelli was positively fuming. ‘Yes, yes, Miss Amory,’ he replied as politely as he could manage. Moving towards her, he tried a somewhat more direct approach. ‘I think your niece is calling you.’
‘Calling me?’
‘Yes. Do you not hear?’
Miss Amory listened. ‘No – no,’ she confessed. ‘How curious.’ She rolled up her knitting. ‘You must have keen ears, Dr Carelli. Not that my hearing is bad. Indeed, I’ve been told that –’
She dropped her ball of wool, and Carelli picked it up for her. ‘Thank you so much,’ she said. ‘All the Amorys have keen hearing, you know.’ She rose from the settee. ‘My father kept his faculties in the most remarkable way. He could read without glasses when he was eighty.’ She dropped the ball of wool again,